This invention relates to data transmission, and more particularly, to program guide data distribution for interactive television program guides.
Cable, satellite, and broadcast television systems provide viewers with a large number of television channels. Viewers have traditionally consulted printed television program schedules to determine the programs being broadcast at a particular time. More recently, interactive electronic television program guides have been developed that allow television program information to be displayed on a viewer's television.
Interactive program guides are typically implemented on set-top boxes. Such program guides allow users to view television program listings in different display formats. For example, a user may instruct the program guide to display a grid of program listings organized in a channel-ordered or a time-ordered list. Users may also search and sort program listing by theme (e.g., movies, sports, etc.) or by title (i.e., alphabetically). A user may view additional information on a program by placing a highlight region on a desired program listing and pressing an "info" button. The user may purchase a pay program from the program guide by placing the highlight region on a program listing and pressing an "OK" button. Some systems allow the user to select a program for recording by placing the highlight region on a program listing and pressing a "record" button.
Program guide data such as program listings, pay-per-view program purchasing information, promotional information, etc. is provided to users' set-top boxes with a data distribution system. Program guide data is typically stored in a central program guide database. Periodically, selected program guide data from the central database is transmitted to the headend facilities of various cable systems. Each headend distributes the program guide data to the set-top boxes in its system.
It is sometimes difficult to distribute program guide data efficiently. Some program guide data (e.g., for current listings) has a higher priority than other program guide data (e.g., for future listings). Moreover, the set-top boxes to which the data must be provided are typically spread over a large geographic area and different groups of set-top boxes require different sets of program guide data. As a result, the program guide data needed for one area is often different than the program guide data needed for another area. It would be desirable if the data processing tasks for different areas could be handled separately to improve system throughput. Moreover, when new cable systems are added, the bandwidth of the data transmission system may start to become filled. It would be desirable if the program guide data provider were able to reconfigure the data transmission system to accommodate such new systems within the available bandwidth of the data transmission system. Another feature that would be useful for a program guide data distribution system is the ability to ease the processing requirements imposed on the cable systems when distributing the program guide data to the set-top boxes.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved arrangement for distributing television program guide data from a centralized program guide database to the set-top boxes or other television equipment on which users have implemented television program guides.